The Legitimacy Puzzle in Latin America: Political Support and Democracy in Eight Nations - Couverture souple

Booth, John A

 
9780521734202: The Legitimacy Puzzle in Latin America: Political Support and Democracy in Eight Nations

Synopsis

Political scientists have worried about declining levels of citizens' support for their regimes (legitimacy), but have failed to empirically link this decline to the survival or breakdown of democracy. This apparent paradox is the 'legitimacy puzzle', which this book addresses by examining political legitimacy's structure, sources, and effects. With exhaustive empirical analysis of high-quality survey data from eight Latin American nations, it confirms that legitimacy exists as multiple, distinct dimensions. It finds that one's position in society, education, knowledge, information, and experiences shape legitimacy norms. Contrary to expectations, however, citizens who are unhappy with their government's performance do not drop out of politics or resort mainly to destabilizing protest. Rather, the disaffected citizens of these Latin American democracies participate at high rates in conventional politics and in such alternative arenas as communal improvement and civil society. And despite regime performance problems, citizen support for democracy remains high.

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À propos des auteurs

John A. Booth is Regents Professor of Political Science at the University of North Texas. In addition to his four coedited volumes and fourteen articles and chapters with this study's coauthor, Mitchell A. Seligson, he is the author of Understanding Central America: Global Forces, Rebellion, and Change (fourth edition 2006 coauthored with Christine J. Wade and Thomas W. Walker); Costa Rica: Quest for Democracy (1998); and The End and the Beginning: The Nicaraguan Revolution (second edition 1985). He has published articles in a wide array of scholarly journals in the United States and Latin America, is an associate editor of International Studies Quarterly, and serves on the editorial board of Latin American Politics and Society.

Mitchell A. Seligson is the Centennial Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University and a Fellow of the Center for the Americas and of the Vanderbilt Center for Nashville Studies. He founded and directs the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP), which conducts the Americas Barometer surveys that currently cover twenty-two countries in the Americas. He has been a Fulbright Fellow and been awarded grants from the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and others and has published more than 140 articles, fourteen books, and dozens of monographs. His most recent book is Development and Underdevelopment: The Politics of Global Inequality (fourth edition, 2003, with John Passé Smith).

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Autres éditions populaires du même titre

9780521515894: The Legitimacy Puzzle in Latin America: Political Support and Democracy in Eight Nations

Edition présentée

ISBN 10 :  0521515890 ISBN 13 :  9780521515894
Editeur : Cambridge University Press, 2009
Couverture rigide